An Orlando Music, Nightlife and Culture Blog

Words from Orlando’s Most Outspoken Event Promoter: Ryan Pemberton

If there’s one thing Orlando needs, it’s more outspoken and cool people like Ryan Pemberton. One of the nicest human beings ever, he works tooth and nail promoting bands, mostly metal. Yet, Ryan is never one to hold his tongue. (For some reason, too many people can’t comprehend the words “nice” and “outspoken” living inside the same person.)

After my asking, Mr. Pemberton blessed this humble blog with his words.

1.What is your Orlando history?

I was born at Florida South right here in Orlando and raised in Pine Hills. I’ve been here for thirty of my nearly thirty-four years of my life. Some would say I’m a glutton for punishment, but this is home for me.

2. What are your views on today’s music?

To me it is no different than any other generation of music, really. By and large, you have to dig. Not to say that everything on the radio is absolute shit, but the majority of everything big shot labels and Clear Channel are pushing isn’t worth the time it took to record.

3. I notice you promote metal shows. What are your views on today’s metal music?

It’s pretty much the same as I stated about music in general above. You have to wade through a lot of bullshit. Metal as a whole is little over saturated today, which is fine. I’d rather have too much of most things than not enough. Metal for young kids today is so easily accessible. Back when I was a teenager, you had to hide LPs from your parents and stuff. Now you can hide 60k songs on a device not much bigger than a business card. In that respect, I think some of the younger kids are a tad bit spoiled. They don’t know what it is like to starve yourself through school, saving your lunch money to buy a record that you’ve never heard because the album art looked cool. Only to find out the record sucks. Also, there’s still a lot of misinformed people that still believe metal is about grooming yourself to be a serial killer or some shit, but metal has nowhere near the stigma it did back when Tipper Gore and the PMRC goons were failing miserably at trying to put metal in a coffin.

4. What are your views on Orlando’s metal scene?

It’s a finicky bastard full of ups and downs. Not any different than any other “scene” I’d imagine.

First and foremost, I don’t think black metal fans are any more or less elitist assholes than any other scene, really. I am an elitist asshole and fuck anyone who claims they aren’t. My friends are all elitist assholes. Everyone is an elitist asshole. It’s just human nature.

That said, I’m not really into black metal. I like some, but a lot of it comes off as either really goofy, or way too serious for me. I mean, like those dudes in Watain, for example. I get imagery and all that kind of thing, but if your image lands you in the hospital with impetigo, you should probably reevaluate some shit.

6. What is the life of a promoter?

You have to be a special kind of dumbass to take monetary risks, knowing there’s not going to be much of a monetary reward in the end. Only to get hated on. Remember that Kevin Costner flick Field of Dreams? “If you build it, they will come”. Yeah, it’s nothing like that. It’s more like “if you build it, they will complain”. All in all I don’t regret a single bit of promoting, though. Despite all the bullshit, I have met incredible people on this ride that I have made homies for life out of, and that is the pay off. You can’t put a monetary value on that.